Holidays III

So much to day...so little time to make an entry while I'm at work.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I love this holiday, mostly becasue I get to eat good food. I like eating. It's one of my weaknesses. But it's fun.

So, in previous posts, I have questioned a couple of the traditions surrounding Christmas. First, I pointed out that we don't really know how many wise men there were becasue the Bible just doesn't say. Next, I made an off-handed comment about Shepherds tending sheep in Winter. The point was that there are some scholars who believe that Jesus was born in the spring, not in the winter. If that totally ruins Christmas for you, I sincerely apologize...but keep reading.

If I had nothing else to do, I would spend a lot of time writing about Christmas and the traditions that surround it. But since I don't, I'll try and summarize a few.

Christmas, as we know it today, really didn't exists until sometime after the founding our our nation. However, celebrations and traditions have always occured around this time of year because of something that has more to do with physics than anything else - the Winter Solstice, or shortest day of the year. Some historians think that ancient cultures put much emphasis on this day because they worshiped the sun. During the winter months, the absense of the sun was feared, so to appease their false gods they held celebrations. Many of our traditions, the Yule log, gift giving, feasts, holly, wreaths, have their roots in pagen celebrations.

In the early years of Christianity, Easter was the main holiday; the birth of Jesus was not celebrated. In the fourth century, church officials decided to institute the birth of Jesus as a holiday. Pope Julius I chose December 25. It is commonly believed that the church chose this date in an effort to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival. First called the Feast of the Nativity, the custom spread to Egypt by 432 and to England by the end of the sixth century. By the end of the eighth century, the celebration of Christmas had spread all the way to Scandinavia. Today, in the Greek and Russian orthodox churches, Christmas is celebrated 13 days after the 25th, which is also referred to as the Epiphany or Three Kings Day. This is the day it is believed that the three wise men finally found Jesus in the manger.

In the early 17th century, a wave of religious reform changed the way Christmas was celebrated in Europe. When Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan forces took over England in 1645, they vowed to rid England of decadence and, as part of their effort, cancelled Christmas. By popular demand, Charles II was restored to the throne and, with him, came the return of the popular holiday.

After the American Revolution, English customs fell out of favor, including Christmas. In fact, Congress was in session on December 25, 1789, the first Christmas under America's new constitution. Christmas wasn't declared a federal holiday until June 26, 1870.

Christmas has even been re-invented a few times since then. It wasn't until Washington Irving's The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, gent., and Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol became popular that that modern Christmas was established.

So, the popular saying that "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" isn't 100% accurate. It is what we as Christians celebrated on Dec 25th, even though he probably want born on that day. Intermingled with the Christian celebrations are various other traditions from many differnt cultures and beliefs.

Pretty cool, huh?

BTW - I need to give credit where credit is due. Most of this blog was plagerized from The History Channel website. If you want more detail about the History of Christmas, check out this link: http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=mini_home&mini_id=1290